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Bake these scrummy Christmas biscuits and have loads of sticky fun decorating them.

They make fab presents and you can even hang them from your tree. And don’t forget to leave some out for Santa!

Easy biscuit recipe

Use this simple recipe as a basis for the festive variations below. It makes around 24 biscuits.

You will need:

250g unsalted butter, softened

140g caster sugar

1 egg yolk

1tsp vanilla essence

pinch of salt

300g plain flour, sifted

400g icing sugar

set of Christmas-themed cookie cutters, or cardboard to make templates (you may need an adult to help with this)

1. Preheat the oven to 190C/Gas 5. Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper.

2. Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl.

3. Gradually beat in the egg and add the vanilla essence.

4. Stir in the flour until it forms a dough.

5. Roll it out on the floured surface to a thickness of 1cm.

6. Cut out your biscuits and place them on the baking tray, not too close together. (Remember to punch a hole before baking if you want to hang them on your tree.)

7. Bake them for 10 minutes, or until they’re firm and golden brown.

8. Take them out of the oven and leave in the tray for 10 minutes before putting them on a wire rack to cool.

9. Mix a little water with the icing sugar until you get a smooth paste.

10. Smooth the icing onto your biscuits using a palette knife.

Christmas tree biscuits

You will need:

a tree-shaped cookie cutter or cardboard template to cut around (a simple triangle with a small trunk at the bottom)

2/3 drops green food colouring or a green icing pen

edible coloured balls for cake decorating.

Just mix the green food colour with your icing and ice your trees all over, or squeeze zigzag lines across your trees with the writing icing – it looks nice if you do some of each design. Add your baubles before the icing dries. For extra-special trees, you could use writing icing in other colours to add some paper chains.

Snowflake biscuits

You will need:

a snowflake cutter, or just a round cutter

white icing pen

light blue icing pen (optional).

Use the white icing pen to a draw a snowflake design on your biscuits. Or you could ice your biscuits in white and, when they’re dry, draw on the snowflake design with the blue pen.

Robin biscuits

You will need:

a round cookie cutter (or a robin-shaped cutter if you have one)

glace cherries

mini chocolate chips

yellow food colour

a small amount of icing, or an icing pen.

If you want, you could add a little cocoa powder to your basic recipe to make your biscuits more robin-coloured. Use a small blob of icing to stick on half a glace cherry for a red breast and chocolate chips for eyes. Add a drop of yellow food colouring to a little icing and use it to make the beaks, or use a yellow icing pen.

Holly leaf biscuits

You will need:

a holly-shaped cutter, or cardboard template

green food colouring

red cake decoration balls/red Smarties or other small round sweets

white icing pen (optional).

Add 2/3 drops of green colour to your icing and ice your biscuits all over. Use a knife to draw a line down the middle with some veins branching off it to make your leaves look more realistic. It also looks pretty if you draw these on with a white icing pen, and go round the edge of the leaf for a snowy effect (it is a bit fiddly though!). Use a small blob of icing to stick on three red ‘berries’ at the base of each leaf.

3D Christmas tree biscuit

If you really want to go to town, have a go at making this stunning 3D tree!

You will need:

a set of star-shaped cookie cutters in graduated sizes

a double quantity of biscuit mix

1kg ready-to-roll fondant icing

3 tbsp warmed jam.

1. When making your biscuits, cut out two star shapes of each size.

2. Once the biscuits have cooled, roll out the icing to about 5mm thick and cut out an icing star for each biscuit.

3. Brush each biscuit with a little jam and stick on the icing star.

4. Stack the biscuits, largest at the bottom, to make your tree. Use a ball of icing to prop up a small star on top. You could decorate it with coloured balls and even use a white icing pen to dribble some icicles from your tree!

We’d love to see some pictures of your finished products before they get gobbled up! So don’t forget to post them on our Facebook page, or on Instagram or Twitter using #NatureDetectives.